


Attraction

by notenuffcaffeine



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: All The Ships, Awesome Sheriff Stilinski, Confused Stiles, Dreamwalking, F/M, Gen, Grieving, M/M, Missing Scenes, POV Stiles, Post-Nogitsune Stiles Stilinski, Protective Derek, Sheriff Stilinski Knows, Stiles Stilinski is Not Amused, Stiles-centric, Stilinski Family Feels, canon character death, everybody just needs a hug, guilty angsty feelings, not a happy fic tho, post-3b canon, pre-season 4, write what the show can't show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-07 07:04:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1889502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notenuffcaffeine/pseuds/notenuffcaffeine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had been a week since Stiles saw the damage and he stared, wide-eyed, around the room. He had "I'm Sorry" on a mantra under his breath.</p><p>"Stiles," said Derek from just behind him. "I can hear you..."</p><p>"Then shut up or say something useful," Stiles sniped back at him. Derek shoved at his shoulder.</p><p>"Exactly," returned Derek. Stiles scowled at him but allowed the point.  He still remembered bleeding bodies and blood on his hands and now Derek was being a jerk. Why was he even here again?</p><p>... or ...</p><p>Missing-scene snippets to bridge between 3b finale and s4 premiere.  How Stiles deals with life, the unwanted memories missing from it, and the stupid twisted confused feelings dragged up by a couple of werewolves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sarcasticchick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarcasticchick/gifts).



> Jo issued a prompt suggesting that Stiles doesn't remember much about his interactions with Malia in Eichen House. So this happened... Basically me trying to fit pieces together, 'cause they fit together pretty well once they're all on the board.
> 
> \-----

It was the first time Stiles had left the house in days. He was a little too aware of his face shredding the local hospital. A little too aware of blowing up the sheriff's office. A little too fucking aware of rigging trip-wires in the park behind the school. Everywhere he had been for the past two weeks - _or was it? He couldn't keep track. Not enough sleep._ \- he had caused some form of chaos and pain. Chaos was fine. It was the pain he didn't want to deal with. He couldn't. So he didn't. But the blank walls of his room had gotten stifling. And Scott had invited him over - _again_ \- so it was time to deal with the sunlight. It was a practice run; Allison's funeral was in two days and Stiles was going to that.

So he got out of the house. Over to Scott's place. He was a little late though, so Scott already had company. Malia Tate was there. Stiles tried to stay out of the way as Scott coached Malia on the finer points of were-shifting. He idly paid attention, offered up reminders to Scott on how they had gotten Scott to do things.

"I'm not throwing lacrosse balls at her, Stiles," said Scott, rolling his eyes. Malia looked like she was going on the defensive at the suggestion and Stiles just shook his head.

"That's not what I said," he clarified before he had his head chewed off by a were coyote on the warpath. "I said to listen to your heartbeat. We don't have the heart monitor so we can't fake it, but Malia can listen to her heartbeat and tell when it gets too fast. Don't let it get too fast. Alright?" He was calm and probably more subdued than usual but Malia stared at him, listened to him, and then finally nodded that she understood.

"Got it," she said. That time, when Scott ran her through getting her body to cooperate with her brain, she snapped claws like a pro. She then promptly shoved them in Stiles' face to show off what he had helped her do, scaring the living shit out of him, but Stiles caught on. He had helped her. She could follow his thinking maybe a little easier than Scott's - because frankly, Scott wasn't a great teacher - and she had just crossed a big bridge. Stiles tried to smile back and encouraged it. He liked being the good guy again.

Scott couldn't get Stiles to settle down and play video games, but he came back the next day to help with Malia again.

 

***

 

Allison's funeral was on a school day. Stiles didn't care about that because he wasn't back to school yet. He had a psychotic break brought about by a genetic mental illness that was being seen to by the best Beacon Hills Medical had to offer. (Which, after the rampage the Nogitsune had gone on, was a dwindling pool.) Stiles wasn't safe at school. He didn't go. He did his school work at home and, after a huge argument that Stiles won, his dad was looking at trying to sign him up to finish his junior year in homeschool. As Stiles saw it, he had killed a dozen people. Maybe not with his own hands, maybe not by his own choice, but people were dead because of him and none of them deserved to be. Allison most of all, because she was his friend, and no one should ever, ever hurt their friends so badly. Stiles had no interest in going back to school to make more friends until he didn't feel the sharp loss of that one so keenly.

It was winter and cold and overcast for the funeral, but not raining. Rain would have just made everything muddy and more miserable. But Stiles was glad for the clouds. Dark like his soul, he mused to himself with a bitter, sarcastic grin. He didn't really believe it, he just figured he should if he were any kind of good person anymore.

It wasn't until he saw Lydia get out of her Mom's car that he realized he hadn't seen her since the hospital. Not since he had woken up and she had squeezed his hand and refused to talk to him, her eyes crying but her lips pulled up in something that was supposed to be a smile. It was her brave mask, her grateful face, and Lydia kept it up until Stiles had fallen asleep again. She was gone when he woke up the next time, and an hour later his dad had told him about Allison, just to make the banshee's stubborn silence make sense. Now, there she was, in black, in a shadow of her usual color, looking like always but the clothes weren't as expensive. Lydia wasn't wearing branded designer clothes. She was mourning. Allison's funeral wasn't about her or her clothes, it was about their friend. Who they missed. Stiles wiped at his eyes with the inside crook of his elbow and tucked his hands back in his pockets. He waited for Lydia to notice him, and she did, and then there were real waterworks and he kind of needed to be hugged as bad as she did suddenly. So it worked out. Then she patted his arm and hinted to be escorted in past the old creaky gates. Their parents walked in with them. Stiles coughed, awkward and self-conscious in a cemetery.

"Uh. Jackson couldn't-"

"No time to arrange it," said Lydia quickly. "And he's safer there. So I didn't tell him."

That surprised Stiles but he just nodded, didn't say anything. By then they had found Scott and his mom - allowed only because Chris Argent didn't fucking care anymore - and Stiles forgot about Jackson again. He and Lydia and their parents stayed with Scott and his mom and Isaac. Malia was with them, too, but she was there out of respect to Scott. She hung near his pack, looking bored and nervous and worried, like she didn't understand all of the people around them exuding all of the emotions. And she probably didn't, Stiles realized. He didn't envy Scott if he took it on himself to try to explain a funeral to a girl who had probably never been to one.

He hadn't been there long when someone else walked up to their group, - more black, more mourning, - and stood at the fringes not far from Stiles. He looked over and felt suddenly gutted as he realized Derek had shown up. Someone else he hadn't seen in at least a week. Stiles eased away from his friends to stand at Derek's shoulder.

"Are you okay here?" Stiles asked, trying to fight what must have been purely Pavlovian panic at seeing Derek Hale around the Argents. "If there's trouble my dad's right there-"

"It's fine, Stiles," Derek said. His tone was firm to show he wasn't going anywhere, but calm and subdued nonetheless. He looked over and actually met Stiles' eyes, which was something rare lately. Even Stiles' dad hadn't nailed that one yet. "I cleared it with Chris. I can pay my respects. I tried to help."

The silent " _it just wasn't enough_ " wasn't bothered with and Stiles swallowed and nodded.

"I'm sorry," he said, quiet. Derek stared at him, set his jaw and shook his head. He looked like he wanted to say something but didn't. Instead he caught Stiles' shoulder under a sympathetic hand and squeezed, shook him a little. It was the only argument he would give and Stiles figured it was about a hundred times more useful than anything the guy could have said out loud. A surprisingly easy silence fell between them and Stiles was content to stand with Derek as the other attendees filtered in and started finding places to sit in the metal chairs under the tent.

Just at the front of the covered gathering space was a closed casket, Chris Argent hovering near it surrounded by people Stiles didn't know and entirely untraceable. Even if he had known any of the other guests and even if Chris hadn't been surrounded by strangers, Stiles knew he wouldn't go up there. There was no way he could say anything to Chris to fix any of it. Maybe it wasn't his fault, but Stiles hadn't helped. He wasn't strong enough, couldn't keep control of his own head, and he caved when he should have fought. Maybe if he had hung on a little longer everything would have turned out differently.

"Stiles," said Derek quietly from beside him. "Knock it off."

Stiles looked over at him, surprised to see Derek watching him. Not angry like usual. Not sarcastic. Actually concerned. It was there on his face and Stiles didn't know what to do with it.

"What?" he asked, confused. Something almost like a shadow of a smile tugged at Derek's lips and that only made it worse.

"Whatever you were thinking about? It plays with your chemistry. Guilt smells different than grief," said Derek. Stiles blinked at him, surprised and self-conscious. Derek nodded toward the casket and Chris. "We're here for them, not you."

It took a moment to process but Stiles caught on. He nodded his understanding and tried to force his mind onto another track. A moment later it was forcefully derailed entirely by someone female and dirty-blonde inserting herself in his immediate space.

"I'm cold," Malia announced. She was scarce inches from his face and staring right at him. Stiles slowly blinked at her.

"Uh... I'm sorry?" he offered. He glanced at Derek and Scott and Isaac. "I guess if we got them to stand a little closer- uh..." His suggestion was cut off by Malia crawling inside his jacket to wrap her arms around him under it. His surprise then was almost painful and Stiles struggled to get his hands out of his pockets and away before someone thought... Well, what exactly was he worried about? They were at a funeral. People hugged at funerals. Generally they knew each other better beforehand, but it was still something they did. And god but Stiles needed the hug. He hesitantly patted her back and returned his hands to his pockets. Malia made herself perfectly comfortable inside his jacket. Derek looked over at them, his bushy eyebrows all judgey and Stiles shrugged it off.

"What? I didn't do it," he pointed out. Derek made a neutral noise and went back to crowd watching. When the ceremony started, Stiles pointed Malia back to her own space over a row just behind Scott so that he could have his dad back. She didn't like it, but she went. Stiles sat through Allison Argent's funeral with no one in his space except himself, wedged shoulder to shoulder between his dad and Derek in the safest place he could possibly be. That didn't mean he didn't sit there and silently cry. It just meant he didn't care.

 

***


	2. Chapter 2

After the funeral, Stiles planned to go to Scott's. He needed to be there for his bro. But his dad had other plans.

"He'll be over," the sheriff told Scott. He didn't seem happy to say it. "But he'll be a little late."

"What? Why?" Stiles asked. Late was not good. He didn’t like late. Late had baggage when his dad said it like that and Stiles had plenty of that stuff on his own and goddamn he didn’t want to...

"We're gonna take care of a few things," said his dad. "At the station."

Stiles jumped, accidentally shoving into Derek. "The station?"

His dad nodded. "It's okay."

"Uh... The _sheriff's_ station?" Stiles needed the clarification. His dad rolled his eyes and curbed a sigh.

"Just trust me," he said.

The phrasing was intentional and Stiles buckled under it. He looked to Scott, worried anyway, but went along with it. He snuck in a hug for Scott before backing off. "I'll see you in awhile, man."

"But you're still going to be at Scott's, right?" Malia asked over his shoulder. "We're going to work on my thing? Like we have all week..."

Taken aback by the unrepentant, selfish tone, Stiles hesitated. He eased out of the hug with Scott and looked over at her. She was just barely not in his space.

"Uh, I'll be over. But I'm not sure when. And today's probably not a good day," said Stiles, careful. "Nobody's going to feel up to it-"

"I do," said Malia. That much was obvious. She was all gung-ho for the daily lessons. Scott looked slightly distressed and slightly ill-tempered. Stiles shoved at his friend's shoulder and told him to go check on Isaac. Then he turned back to Malia.

"Right. Uh. Remember when we took your so sister's doll?" he asked. She nodded, lips tightening.

"That was not yours and you had no right to it," she reminded him coldly. "But I got it back. So it's okay. Now."

"Yeah, we didn't know. I told you that. But the thing is... Why was the doll important?" Stiles asked.

"Because it's mine," Malia said. Stiles nodded patiently.

"Yes but besides that. It's important because it was hers, right? It's how you remember her?"

Malia hesitated before nodding. "Yes, but it's _mine_."

Stiles sighed. He nodded toward the casket at the front and his friends standing not far from it, like they were afraid of it.

"This whole ceremony thing is Scott's and Isaac's and Lydia's, okay? They don't have a doll but they want to remember our friend. Today is how we do that," said Stiles. “Like, the whole day.”

Malia frowned as she sorted it out. Them she crossed her arms and shook her head. "Well if you can take my doll..."

"Yeah, _no_. That's _not_ how it works," said Stiles quickly. He felt a flash of anger but tramped it down because the girl's defiant expression faded to concern at his tone change. He calmed in response too, encouraging her as much as actually relieved. "We told you the doll thing was an accident. So you don't get to take revenge on accidents because we didn't mean to hurt you and we tried to fix it. We meant well, we were just stupid. So don't be mean to stupid people, Malia. It's just... Mean."

Stiles' dad huffed his amusement as he nodded his agreement. "He's right on that," the sheriff said. "It doesn't do any good and just makes people act more stupid all around."

"Right," added Stiles. He waved a hand. "All around. It creates a cycle that doesn't stop. So it's better not to start it. And it's better to leave Scott alone right now because Allison was his friend and our family and he misses her. So we'll do it _another day._ "

It was a lot of information but Malia looked around at the tearful people filing out of the cemetery as she thought it through.

"So tomorrow then?" she asked. Stiles huffed and curbed his annoyance; it wasn't her fault she had never been to a funeral. _Well_. Then again, maybe it kind of _was_. Like this one was Stiles' fault. Indirectly responsible and stuck with it. And Malia turned into a kid with some serious issues over it just like Stiles knew he was.

"Fine, that works," he said. He looked back to her. " _Tomorrow_. You meet me at my house and I'll work with you on it. And if Scott is feeling better by then then he can show up too. Deal?"

Malia smiled at him, big and bright and genuine. She nodded. Them she pounced on his neck in a hug and hung on tight. She had just spent two hours watching people hug at random and didn't fully have the hang of the personal space issue in the first place. Stiles wasn’t sure what to do with it.

"Okay, then I'll see you tomorrow," he said as he carefully coaxed her back into her own space bubble. Malia nodded, repeated the appointment time, and then wove her way out of the grieving family and friends still mingling. Stiles felt exhausted watching her leave; how did she not feel anything around her? The guilt was stifling him, so shouldn't she at least be picking up that something was wrong? Then he shook his head and remembered the group therapy session; she probably _could_ sense there were problems but she didn't have the handle on humanity to understand yet what it meant.

"Not her fault but... Weird kid," said the sheriff on a sigh. Stiles nodded absently.

" _Coyote_ , anyway," he said. They wandered to the sheriff's car. By the time they got to the parking lot and Stiles looked around for Derek, the man was gone. _That_ figured.

Stiles didn't ask why they were going to the station, he would find out when he got there. He could trust his dad, damnit.

When they parked at the station, Stiles was surprised to see Derek's truck parking nearby. He walked to the station with them.

"It's not that bad," said the sheriff, shaking his head. He held open the door for the both of them anyway. "Just some story confirmations."

"Right," sighed Stiles. The inner offices were still a shambles. Debris had been picked up, and what _wasn't_ was piled up nicely on a desk, out of the way. Everything had to be matched up to the file it came from, cross checked for anything remotely useful, and then put away. The office was down so many deputies, mostly from work-related injuries only, that they didn't have anyone free to do the clerical grunt work. Where there used to be walls around his dad's office was now broken wood and mangled-but-still-standing file cabinets. The stupid file cabinets had saved lives. It had been a week since Stiles saw the damage and he stared, wide-eyed, around the room. He had _I'm Sorry_ on a mantra under his breath.

"Stiles," said Derek from just behind him. "I can hear you..."

"Then shut up or say something _useful_ ," Stiles sniped back at him. Derek shoved at his shoulder.

"Exactly," returned Derek. Stiles scowled at him but allowed the point. He still remembered bleeding bodies and blood on his hands and now Derek was being a jerk. _Why_ was he even here again?

"Moral support," said Derek, his usual brand of sarcastic. The sheriff didn't seem interested in arguing it and lead them into one of the remaining rooms untouched by the explosion. It was the tech room that backed the office's interview room. The only computers that hadn't been fried to bits were in that room, shielded and on a different grounded electrical box, and they still worked. Stiles stared warily at the big one-way mirrored window that looked into the interview room. His dad shut the light off in the other room as a hint that he was looking at the wrong thing.

"Have a seat," the sheriff said, tugging a chair out from in front of one of the computers. So Stiles did and instantly reached for the mouse out of habit. The black screen clicked to life again and Stiles kicked back from the desk when he saw the image up on it. It was a CC video from the hospital. From the night the Nogitsune had torn the place to bloody ribbons.

" _Fuck_ -"

"Calm down," said the sheriff. He looked from Stiles to Derek, drawing attention to the sudden tension from the werewolf in their midst. Stiles took a deep breath and tried to focus on his dad, not on the computer. His dad pointed to the screen.

"Now I want you to watch this. And then I want you to keep quiet about it until we get back in the car. Alright? Don't say a damn word. Either one of you."

Stiles nodded, trying hard to get his breathing back under control. Then he shook his head. "Nope. Can't watch it."

"Then don't," said Derek. He leaned across Stiles' space and reached for the mouse. Stiles glared at him for it but the video was playing just at the peripheral of his vision. It was chaos in silent black and white. He remembered it in color. It looked different on the screen. A single person walking the hall. Just Stiles. By himself. But papers were flying, lights were flickering, and people were falling in and out of his way. Stiles tilted his head. _Where were the Oni?_ He started to open his mouth, to point out to his dad that the video was _wrong_ , but Derek shushed him.

"He said don't," said Derek, distracted.

Stiles frowned and went back to watching the screen. The only thing recognizable in the video was him and that was only because he felt fairly confident he knew what he looked like. But it was hard to tell because the camera didn't have an angle on his face and it could have been any asshole in a dark jacket. Killing people invisibly somehow.

Then the Nogitsune turned to address the nurse behind a counter and looked over at the cameras. Stiles tensed, expecting to see his own face. But he didn't. He saw... "What the hell is that?"

"The fox," said Derek quietly. "Shut up."

Stiles accepted it and stared, watching the swirl of lens flare around where he _should_ have seen his face. With the bulky clothes and the weird glare on the camera, he could almost pretend he hadn't just watched Melissa McCall's coworker die because of him all over again.

"Got it," said Derek as he clicked the video to a stop and pushed the button on the screen to turn it off. Stiles blinked at the sudden black. Then he looked back at his dad.

"That was it?"

"That's it. Every scrap we've got is just like that," his dad said with a nod. "So let's get you to Scott's."

Stiles knew a rat when he smelled one and he glared at the back of his dad's head the whole way back to the car. They got outside and a sufficient distance from the front doors before he started to speak up. Hand held up to warn him off, his dad talked over him.

"Derek? Can you get him to Scott's? I should probably try to get some work done on this," he said. Derek nodded.

"Yeah, I can do that," he said. Stiles gaped between the two of them.

"What the _hell_ -" he began. His dad didn't seem to notice. He was still dealing with Derek.

"Is it what you said?" he asked.

"Yep," said Derek. "Exactly what I said would happen."

"So we can toss that video feed to whoever we want and they can't clean it up?" Sheriff Stilinski said. Derek nodded. Stiles' jaw dropped. He just watched the sheriff of Beacon Hills quietly arrange to smother evidence.

" _Oh my god_ -"

"Let's not piss anybody off, Stiles," suggested his dad mildly. He offered a small grin and tugged Stiles in for a hug. "Stay out of trouble. I'm working on it."

Stiles hugged him back, too surprised. "I... I think I approve... But I can't tell... What-?"

"Just go hang out with Scott. You kids need a break. All of you. Take one," his dad said.

"Isaac said he's leaving with Chris later..."

"So see? Scott's going to need your help, son," said the sheriff. "Just... Try to take it easy for awhile? I'll take care of this and be home tonight. I can pick you up if you want."

Stiles nodded, still missing a step. He'd beat it out of Derek in the car because his dad was being shifty. He let his dad leave and went around to climb into Derek's Toyota. _All the surreal experiences today_.

"What the hell just happened?" he demanded.

"Your dad wanted to show me the footage from the hospital," said Derek, patient. "It was less weird if you were involved than if it was just me."

"How is that- I fail _completely_ at seeing how that makes it _less_ weird," said Stiles. Derek arched an eyebrow at him.

"Of the two of us here, which of us has actually been arrested for murder?"

Stiles rolled his eyes at the car ceiling. "Oh my god are you still riding that?"

"The arrest record makes it odd that the sheriff would just consult me on a case at the department," said Derek. "Him showing you and me tagging along is _less weird_."

"Since when do _you_ tag along though?"

Derek was not impressed by the dig or the apparent level of idiot Stiles had just unlocked. "Since life went to hell without the hand basket and I literally have nothing better to do with my time than help keep you and Scott out of jail?"

Considering it, Stiles thought it over. Then he shrugged. "Oh... Yeah, I can accept that."

 

***

 

Derek dropped Stiles at Scott's place and then disappeared. He wasn't interested in tagging along with Scott. Stiles was used to Derek's moods with Scott and had been for months, but there was a weird weight to it this time.

"Text or call me if you need me," Derek told him, which wasn't his usual level of effort into a parting greeting. Usually it went more along the lines of " _Get out._ " Stiles was still stuck on the difference as he walked into Scott's place. He almost wished he'd stuck with Derek instead because five minutes in on the project of hanging out with Scott and Stiles realized he was the last person Scott really needed to be around. He was jumpy. He was very aware of Stiles. And he kept looking at him like he was expecting a monster to crawl out of his chest. Or shove a katana through Scott’s.

"Do we need to look up some kind of exorcism handshake or something here, Scott?" Stiles finally asked, trying to laugh it off and failing. Scott shook his head quickly, reached over and dropped a hand to Stiles' shoulder like he had to keep him from wandering away.

"No way, man. I'm just... Worried, I guess," he said. And Stiles knew he didn't mean anything by it, but it kind of still pissed him off. Remembering the video from the hospital, Stiles reached over and grabbed Scott's cell phone from the end table. That did absolutely nothing to make Scott any more confident about the state of Stiles' mental health but he ignored it, opened up the camera. Stiles took a selfie, angled so Scott was in the picture with him and looking on at his shoulder, baffled and concerned. Stiles flipped off the camera as he snapped the picture. Back in his own space again, he checked that the picture worked how he wanted it to before he set it as the phone background. He was more relieved than he would admit that there were no swirling dark lines obscuring his face in the shape of a fox muzzle. It was just a picture of Stiles flipping off the camera and Scott's werewolfy eyes triggering every lens flare a stupid camera phone could be stumped by. Stiles gave it back to Scott then.

"I swear to god, man, I'm just me, okay?" he said, quietly. "No hitchhikers. No parasitic demon foxes. No nightmares. Sleeping sucks but I usually accomplish it if I sleep on the couch." Stiles had watched so many stupid fluffy monster-free cartoons in the last week he was amazed he still had brain cells. He had finally graduated up to the Muppets the night before. He was making progress. "So you don't gotta worry about me. You didn't before, we did great then."

It felt a little flat but Stiles shrugged it off. Scott stared at him.

"I worried," he said. Stiles nodded.

"Yeah, but not like this. So just... Hide the katanas if you think you have to and let's go back to normal, huh? I am nogi-free and worrying about me catching that flu-bug again is going to give us both ulcers or something," Stiles said. "We still got us, right?"

The quiet dragged on but Scott nodded. He seemed like he meant it.

 

***


	3. Chapter 3

Waking up in the locker room at school was the last thing Stiles wanted. He was awake. At least, he felt awake, but... Everything was really weird. He had been here before and it was always like a dream. He was on the mats in the corner with the gear, which wasn't really unusual, because Stiles ditched class there sometimes. But he wasn't sure how he got there this time, or why, or why it seemed like he had slept twenty hours and was now looking out at the fading sunlight of the day instead of the 1am darkness he had fallen asleep in. There was no noise though, no one talking. No one banging the locker doors. No one slither-stepping along in their mummy wrap to stalk him. This wasn't his dream. He was safe. But the two conclusions weren't mutually exclusive and Stiles wanted out of wherever he was.

Stiles stood and hesitantly started moving toward the exit. He didn't like locker rooms. He had seen the inside of one too many lockers recently to be comfortable standing in a room full of them. Thankfully, however he had gotten there, he was at school and he knew his way out. He stopped short as he passed the row with his and Scott's lockers. Someone was sitting in front of them.

"Derek?" he asked. He stepped closer, crossing his arms as he moved. This wasn't right. Something was wrong. But he was awake. "What's going on?"

Looking up at him from the bench, Derek seemed mildly surprised and confused. He looked... lost. Stiles tilted his head. “Are you okay, man?”

Derek shook his head. “It was a dream. It was actually… It was more like a nightmare.”

The admission was weird. It was more words than Derek had strung together for a single sentence in months. It surprised Stiles and he tried to shrug off the whole surreal feel around him.

"Okay. What happened?"

And Derek told him. He told him about the hunters who had trapped him and Peter when they took Cora back to her adopted pack down south. About the torture, the demands for Derek and Peter to help them find something called _la loba_. About a rescue and a gun battle. And about how, after everything else that had happened over the past month since, Severo and his men had come back, tracked him down and attacked him at the loft. He had come back from the sheriff's station, after Allison's funeral, and been jumped by the hunters in his own home. By someone he thought he recognized. But it couldn't be possible. Derek, the only werewolf Stiles knew who seemed mostly grounded in a very harsh reality, didn't seem to believe who he thought he had seen.

"But it was all just a dream," Stiles said. "You're okay now. So it must be okay. Just a dre- nightmare." He knew those well enough lately.

Derek stared at him before slowly shaking his head. "I don't think I am. Not with this. Not with them."

The odd answer made Stiles feel cold and he had to pry. Dream or nightmare or not, Derek knew something that he wasn't telling him. And the last time that happened, they ended up with alphas at their door. Literally.

"Who was it?" he asked. Derek hesitated but he still tried to work it out.

"There’s a lot of myths about how people can be turned into a werewolf. Usually a bite. There’s one about rainwater..."

Stiles offered up a nod and a shrug. "Drinking rain water out of the puddle of a werewolf’s print."

"There’s another one," said Derek. He seemed almost visibly afraid, his voice quiet and rough. It was so completely not Derek. Stiles stepped closer and slid into the bench across from him.

"Derek, if this is all just a dream, why do you look so worried?"

The look Derek gave Stiles then was scary. He was lost. He was afraid. They had been some crazy places before but Stiles had never seen that look on Derek's face before. He was worried and nearly begging for help.

"Because I don’t remember waking up," he said. "S-so tell me. How do you know? How do you know if you’re still dreaming?"

Stiles felt it then, the fear at the core of his gut, the stuff that had kept him awake for a week, terrified of dreams. He couldn't tell what was real or what was a dream. Derek was real. He was right there. But he was certain it wasn't real, and Stiles was suddenly right there with him on it. He took a shaky breath and tried to think.

"Fingers. In dreams you have extra fingers," he finally said. Derek grabbed the suggestion like a lifeline, but instead of checking his own hand, he caught Stiles' wrist. He held up his hand to splay out six digits, five fingers and a thumb. All Stiles could do was stare. He had known it was a dream. It felt real, but everything was wrong. He was back in hell again and Derek had just proved it to him. Stiles stared at his hand, stuck and fighting panic, and then Derek disappeared.

Stiles startled himself awake and found himself in his own bed, sitting on the edge of it and facing his window. It was dark, just the moon coming through the window. And a really bad dream sitting in his head that wouldn’t let go. He glanced at the clock and saw that it wasn’t much past two am. But Stiles was awake for good. At least until daylight. He took a deep breath and shoved to his feet to go get some coffee. Even though he knew his room and he knew what it looked like when he wasn’t awake, Stiles checked his fingers as he reached for the door. Just five. Still, he rubbed at his wrist where Derek had grabbed him in the dream; the man had a vice grip even in Stiles’ head and it was like he could still feel him hanging on.

 

***

 

As promised, the next day, Malia showed up at Stiles' house whether he was awake enough to deal with her or not. She didn't knock, just wandered right in, which scared the living hell out of Stiles because he thought he was at home alone. He sat in the kitchen staring at a textbook that refused to sink into his brain, and suddenly he had Malia walking at him. Stiles startled so bad his chair scraped.

"Woah!"

"What?"

Her voice helped and he calmed down, mentally reassociating the visitor with a friendly and not an attack.

"I wasn't- wow. You spooked me," said Stiles. He frowned. "Shit, did you knock? I didn't hear. How long were you-"

"Knock on what?"

Stiles stared at her, surprised. "The front door?"

"No, you said I could come see you here."

Malia didn't remember how front doors worked. Okay. Good to know. Stiles took a deep breath. "I think we need to start off with a few basics," he said. "Like social stuff. Like front doors."

A little huffy at the executive decision, Malia crossed her arms. "I don't care about the social stuff," she said. "I want to get back to normal. I don't like being stuck like this..."

"Yeah, I get it," said Stiles quickly. "But that's part of it. At least, that's how it is with Scott. He's still Scott, but he's got this werewolf side. And if he only listens to one side or the other, he goes a little crazy. So maybe fitting in on this one, the side you're stuck with... Maybe it'll help get you back to shifting faster."

"I really can't tell you how much I _don't_ care about doors," Malia said, openly annoyed. "I mean, I don't need them. I don't need to know how to open a door because I can do that this way, or I could before too. Did you know that? I'm not stupid, Stiles."

That offended him and Stiles frowned at her, jumped forward a little. "That wasn't what I meant. Look, this stuff took Scott forever to learn, okay? You might have a lot of time to kill. If you want to learn how to get back to normal, you gotta... Well. Hell." Stiles stood up a little taller, blinking as he realized.

"What?" Malia asked, suspicious. Stiles stared at her.

"You gotta get strong. Like an alpha."

Malia shook her head. "I don't need a pack-"

"I said _like_ an alpha. I didn't say you had to be one, just... _Like_ one. You gotta be your own little coyote alpha," said Stiles.

"Fine. So?"

"So, that's not easy. So you gotta start way at the bottom and nail everything on the way up. You gotta know about everything. Everything we can find. Can you read?"

Malia glared at him for the question. He rolled his eyes.

"It's not exactly like riding a bike. You can forget things. Stuff can change..."

"Yes. I can read," she said. "I just think it's stupid. I don't care about stories."

"Good. Great even. That saves us, like, so much work," said Stiles. He started shoving his own homework books closed in a hurry. Malia looked on in obvious confusion but Stiles didn't care. He could do this. Start over at the beginning. He could help her.

"Look, it's not easy. What you want to do. It's just really not. So trust me, me and Scott, we can help. He can teach you the coyote wolfy stuff. I can help with the other stuff. Me and Derek did it for Scott. Derek was kind of an ass about it but so was Scott and I freakin' got Scott's ass kicked..."

Malia did not appreciate the ramble. Stiles tried to slow down. He offered a self-conscious shrug of his shoulders. "What? He kinda deserved it. It was cool."

The coyote in the room shivered from her misunderstanding of the word. Stiles sighed and shook his head. They had so much ground to cover.

 

***


	4. Chapter 4

There were downsides to Stiles' go-get-em attitude about helping Malia. He seriously didn't have the energy. He felt drained and sapped and... Well, for the first time on his life he felt like he had been vamped. He kind of had been, by a Nogitsune, but he missed physically feeling _normal_.

Still, he kept on. He helped get Malia up to par on the whole _human_ thing, buying Scott some time to deal with his own human-issues. He had so many of them. Stiles was feeling better about it himself though; teaching Malia about it was helping him remember normal a little better. They had a goal: get Malia better integrated with her own peer group, help her psychologically by keeping her around her age group. Raise the bar instead of lower it. Get her back on her feet instead of baby her. It was what her counselor wanted her to try.

It coincided nicely with the advice from Stiles' shrink, too. Stiles wasn't going back to school yet, no _way_ , but there was something useful to trying to make a coyote-girl pretend to be human because Stiles felt like he had to follow suit and set an example. Malia didn't believe him when he said Scott was still able to teach her human-stuff, because he was an alpha and a werewolf and not the same, so Stiles had to be the shiny super example of humanity that he didn't feel capable of being. It gave him a goal to shoot for, too. It distracted him.

But Malia still wasn't his usual crowd. They gave him his space. Lydia texted more than she saw him face to face. She called him now, for non-emergency- _just-found-a-dead-body_ reasons, so that was nice. And Scott came around, but mostly it had to do with Malia then. It was winter break. He didn't have to be anywhere he didn't want to be. So Scott texted or skyped and stayed in his room more than he wanted to do much. It worked for Stiles. He kind of had his hands full with a very physical, very touchy, very attitudinal coyote anyway. He had to pace himself accordingly.

It was hard to figure Malia out. She was easier to predict than Lydia, but at the same time her random fits of independence had resulted in at least one accidental (Stiles assumed) black-eye, so in other areas she was so much harder to predict than Lydia. Stiles asked Lydia to help Malia with "girl-stuff" and got lectured to about something feminist. So Scott asked Kira to do it and everyone got along much better after that. Malia knew how to pick her own clothes and get dressed like a normal human being so Stiles managed to avoid the really awkward stuff.

He stuck to pack stuff, what little he knew about what that meant, who could be trusted and who couldn't, why packs were useful and not a burden. Which in turn lead to what the word " _trust_ " actually entailed because _no_ , pack does not mean you eat them first ala the Donner party if ever stuck in a blizzard. Malia came to the conclusion that you eat pack _last_ then and Stiles knew they had a lot of work still to do, no matter what he ever said to her.

It started to make Stiles feel a little better. Working with Malia and sometimes Scott drew him back out a little. He still had stuff he was good for, the Nogitsune hadn't broken everything. Stiles didn't actually kill _everything_ he touched; sometimes he made them better. Malia was getting better. Stiles was getting better.

The first full moon with Malia though... That almost sent Stiles under his bed to hide and make a nice, cozy new home with the dust mites.

His dad had to work late that night, because it wasn't just _werewolves_ who lost their shit on a full moon, and Stiles stayed home. Full moons were werewolf things. That was Scott's territory. Stiles told him to ask Derek for help but Scott said he could handle it. Stiles didn't know _how_ he could handle it, since Scott had sorta just lost his anchor, but he didn't want to make things worse by pointing that out. So he asked his dad not to respond to any nine-one-ones about werewolves and settled in to abuse his Netflix account.

The last thing Stiles expected was his bedroom door to open on it's own. He dodged for his bat and ended up on the floor because he misjudged where it had hidden itself. Falling off the bed was on par with running, scared prey turning it's back, and Stiles was grabbed by the belt and hauled away from the bed when the intruder pounced. He rolled and stopped, stared up at Malia kneeling over him, trapped between her thighs in a very unsexy way.

"What the hell, Mal!" Stiles actually yelled at her. She wasn't shifted, aside from blue eyes glowing at him. But Malia definitely wasn't _home_ , either. Her mouth curled up in a hiss like she was trying to _be_ shifted, like she was in pain, but it was her normal face otherwise. Stiles started to sit up, angry and already starting in on a reminder lecture about why she was supposed to knock before walking into someone's house, and she shoved him back down with a hand to his chest. Stiles realized then what the problem was.

"Oh shit." He went still and stayed down, staring at Malia so she knew he was watching. No sudden movements. No breaking eye contact. She had claws in his freaking shirt and sniffed at him, listened to him, so Stiles tried to calm his heart rate. Not too fast, don't provoke the predator, don't emphasize the weakness... Of being prone on his back with no weapon, no defense against something twenty times stronger than him with claws and really sharp teeth and the urge to rend flesh and _holy hell he was so screwed..._

"Malia... Back off," he said, carefully controlling his tone. He kept his hands up to block if he needed to. She leaned in to sniff him and he caught the collar of her shirt to brace her away from him. "Malia! Stop." He shoved a little to get her attention and she bared her teeth at him. He mimicked it and shook her again.

"Where's Scott? You were supposed to be with Scott-" Stiles shut up when her claws dug deeper and she looked angry. Scott had to be somewhere, had to have seen that he was missing somebody he was supposed to be babysitting...

"SCOTT!" He yelled it as loud as he could since texting his jerk of a brother wasn't an option. They didn't live far apart and Scott was a goddamn werewolf. "Scott! Get your ass over here!"

Stiles was tired, clawed in the chest and hurting and tired and he wondered if maybe that was alright. His voice could carry, Scott could track Malia, but maybe that just wasn't in the cards this time. Maybe it was okay to give up and be done. What was the worst that could happen? A little maiming and then no more worrying about goddamn werewolves. So Stiles just stayed where he was, staring up at Malia, challenging her without freaking moving because it took everything he had just to keep her back, his hands against her collarbone and arms locked to keep the teeth away.

And then she stopped. An odd expression came over her face, confusion and disapproval and fear.

" _STILES!_ " came the shout from downstairs. At the same time, Malia's claws retracted and it was just a hand flat against Stiles' chest, tangled in a now bloody shirt. Relief hit Stiles and his heart rate climbed again, breath coming in pants and hesitant gasps.

"Scott! I got her!" he yelled back at the open doorway. Because he did. He had Malia. She had stopped pushing and had gone boneless and weighted down on his efforts to keep her away. She wiggled and brought up one of her arms and managed to drag down into his chest. But she didn't bite, she just lay there, ear to his chest like she was listening to his heartbeat. She draped her arms at his sides and hung on, the rest of her pretty effectively pinning him down under the circumstances. Stiles stared wide-eyed, not sure what the hell had happened. He kept his hands up, not sure if he would need them to avoid being chewed on or something, because _what the actual hell was going on_? But he was breathing and alive when Scott finally showed up in the door. His friend was half wolfed and looked panicked and still Stiles saw Scott first.

"What'd you do? Stop for freakin’ coffee on the way?" Stiles asked, just to get his attention. With the other, _safer_ , supernatural force in the room, though, Stiles seemed to collapse and he stared at his ceiling, content to just breathe.

 

***

 

Scott got Malia out of the house and Stiles somehow avoided a mental break. He wasn't done. He was still in it. Still up to his eyeballs in everything. His dad was on shift until 7am and it was only midnight. And there was no alcohol in the house. It wasn't like a break-up caused him a need to forget, but Stiles really wanted to check-out. It had been easier with the Nogitsune riding around. He could just shut down when he couldn't deal and the demon would take over and Stiles didn't have to deal with it. Now, no more demon. He had to deal with being attacked by yet one more person he had been trying to help, someone else he had a little trust in just turning on him. Stiles couldn't go to Scott for help. He couldn't go to Lydia if he had a coyote chasing him. He was stuck. Stiles seethed, angry, and glared at the kitchen island. He couldn't even go to his room. He was too keyed up on all the bad stuff of the past six months.

He needed to drive.

Stiles grabbed his keys and headed for the front door, not caring that he didn't have a coat, or that his shirt was bloody and that meant he was bleeding. That would stop eventually. He just needed out.

 

****

 

It wasn't a total surprise that he ended up at Derek's apartment. Stiles had been there a lot last summer. Shit had happened between summer and Christmas, but Derek still lived there. Stiles needed _somebody_ and Derek was next in line. Plus Malia wouldn't walk into Derek's territory. Not even moon-crazy would she be that brave. Stiles had figured that out about her: she wasn't brave and brash, she was smart, and she knew when to attack and when to wait. That was why she let him go when Scott showed up. Her smart side broke through the moon's bloodlust and Malia won. She was good. And she wouldn't walk into a place that smelled like a wolf den. The safest place for Stiles was at Derek's place.

The problem was, nobody was home. Stiles had to let himself inside. There was no one there. He turned on a few lights and walked the whole apartment but everything was empty, just like usual. Dirty, like usual. Smelled a little smoky like it had the last time he was there, like the time he tossed Derek up against a wall like he was a frisbee or something. Like sulfur and ash and creepy supernatural shit. Why the hell Derek hadn’t aired the place out with his super-senses Stiles didn’t know, but he didn’t have to live there so it wasn’t his business. Stiles pulled out his phone and crashed onto the couch, texting Derek to ask where he was. It was the full moon so maybe he was off doing werewolfy things. Stiles still wanted to talk to him.

He waited for a reply for awhile until he got bored. Then he sent another one, blatantly appealing to Derek's usual panic trigger and telling him there was a coyote problem at his house so he was hiding at the loft. But even that one got no immediate response.

All the same, Stiles decided, he was there and not leaving and Derek could just deal with it; if he had a problem he would have spoken up. So Stiles went in search of something to do and wound up in the broken elevator in the back corner. Derek had a bunch of books there, stacks and stacks of them, in piles and against the walls and there was just enough space in the middle to sit and read. So Stiles sat and read books at random, picking one up, reading until he was bored, then finding a new one.

Within the hour he was passed out on the floor of the elevator with a book on his face to block the light. Derek never showed up.

 

***

 

The next morning, Stiles drove himself home to find Malia sitting on his front porch. It was hardly sun-up. He looked at her a little sideways and she jumped up like she was going to rush him. Stiles let out a bleat that was not quite a shout but a definite negative, his arms held up to block her, and she stopped in her tracks.

“Scott said I hurt you and I wanted to-” Malia stopped and kind of shut her mouth like she wasn’t sure what the words were that she was trying to say. Stiles stared at her in open shock.

“Wanted to what?” he asked. He plucked at the ruined shirt he still wore, the bloody claw marks not worth trying to save it. He lost so damn many clothes to werewolfy shit lately. “You kinda did hurt me. It was not appreciated. Just to clarify.”

“I- but you’re okay?” Malia crossed her arms and her fingers tugged at her lip as she stared at him. She was anxious.

“I’m fine. But what’d you want to say?” Stiles pressed. “You wanted to _what_?”

Malia’s worry soured a little and she squared her shoulders. “To make sure you’re okay.”

That was a lie and even Stiles and his non-supernatural sense could pick that one up. “Okay, well, I’m fine. Go home.”

“That’s not-”

“What then?” challenged Stiles. “Didja wanna say something?”

It made Malia uncomfortable. But it wasn’t just Stiles’ mood that told him that was a good thing after what she had done. It was progress. “Maybe did you want to say you were sorry?”

Malia stared back at him, biting her lip. She tried to shrug it off, made the most pitifully confused face Stiles had ever seen on anyone’s face, human or otherwise, and then nodded. “I guess, yeah.”

That was kind of ground-breaking. For a moment, Stiles just gaped. “Really?” he asked. “Like, you actually mean it? Or you’re just agreeing with it because I said it?”

“I don’t want you to be mad at me,” she replied. She was hedging, but she was thinking. Stiles accepted it. He was tired. He had slept on the floor at Derek’s place. Buried under dusty books. He would accept whatever forward movement he could get.

“Well, for the record, I have a right to be mad at you,” he said. She deflated a little and he waved it off. “Doesn’t mean I am, just means I could be. But I know what happened, so I’m not mad.”

It was like he had sent out invitations or something and he was rushed again. Suddenly Malia was wrapped around him, in his space, in a big hug with no concern whatsoever for the claw-marks bruising the chest she was now crushing with her own. Stiles hugged her more carefully in return and patted her shoulder, waiting patiently for her to let him go when she was done, which was kind of a regular thing lately.

Except she didn’t. She kissed him. Full on the lips and _well-damn that was a little more than just on the lips_ and Stiles pulled back. He held a finger up to call for a pause-point in the game.

“Okay, I think we need to have another chat about personal boundaries,” he said, trying to get his voice back. “‘cause that’s a big one. Like, _really_ big with me. You don’t just _kiss_ people, Malia. Seriously. Not like that.”

She frowned at him, a kicked puppy all over again and Stiles _hated_ his life.

“I didn’t kiss people,” Malia said, a shade of her usual attitude. “I kissed you.”

“Yeah, but I’m a _person_...” Stiles stared at her in offended surprise. “That shouldn’t be a newsflash to you at this point...”

“Yeah, and I’ve kissed you before. In... a lot of places,” she said. She didn’t even have the grace to blush about the declaration, so Stiles did it for her.

“Okay, I’m not sure what that even means, but could you keep your voice down,” he said. He waved toward the house. “My dad’s home. He’s gonna get all the _worst_ ideas...”

Malia stepped away from him, fully confused and on her way to angry. “I don’t understand you, Stiles. I don’t care what ideas your dad gets. You kissed me before and you said it was okay and now you’re changing your mind and I didn’t mean to-”

“Wait woah what hold up!” Stiles stared at her, shocked. Malia was a lot of things, sneaky and blatant and impulsive and selfish, but she wasn’t real good at making things up. She didn’t apparently have the social skills required to do it. “What the hell do you mean _I_ started it?”

“Before?” Malia gave a vague wave toward the sunrise crawling up the sky. “At the oak-place.”

“Oak-place- Eichen House?” Stiles’ jaw dropped and he froze up, his brain too busy sorting through mental boxes in search of the one he had locked away everything that had to do with that one really-bad-idea-that-hadn’t-done-any-good-anyway. “I - you - I mean, _we_ did something at Eichen House?”

“In the basement?” said Malia, still confused though slightly less - or maybe that was more - annoyed. “We were looking through the papers and you had that weird mark on your back that was going away-”

“Wha...” Sound seemed to give up on him for a moment. Stiles had to kickstart his voice up again with a cough. “What did we do?”

Malia rolled her eyes and waved at him. “That. What you just said we couldn’t do. We _did_.”

“We did?” asked Stiles. It was really close to a squeak but he decided not to try again. Malia nodded. The expression on her face said she was fairly certain he needed to be back in Eichen House on his own. Stiles stared at her, probably blushing harder. He scrubbed at his face and tugged at his messed up, dusty hair, suddenly anxious himself.

“Oh boy.”

Of all the damn times to have blacked out and lost to a freakin’ fox demon. It had to have been then. And there. And he had to find out about it now.

“Stiles?” came Malia’s voice. She sounded concerned. “Are you okay?”

Before he could think about it, Stiles shook his head. He backed away carefully and angled toward his house.

“I don’t think I am,” he said, honest and more than a little worried about his mental state. “I think I need to get some, like, real sleep. And... figure some stuff out.”

Malia turned with him, looking like she wanted to follow him. “Stiles! I’m sorry, okay? I’m really sorry...”

He stopped his retreat and reached out, caught her by the shoulders to hold her still and make her stay where she was, on the porch and not follow him into the house. “I get that, Mal. You’re fine. I’m not mad. It was the moon thing, and I promise, I get it. It’s okay.”

“But then why-”

“Because I need some sleep and I need to think and be by myself. Remember?” he said. “You know what that’s like. You said you liked to be by yourself before. Well, people get that way even when they’re not coyotes. And I need to. So I’ll call you tomorrow or something.”

She nodded and Stiles all but ran inside his house. He didn’t want to lose it, but this was scary. He thought he remembered everything. He thought he remembered all of it. All the dead bodies, all the blood and the gore and the tricks and the lies. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he had been out of it for more things, maybe worse things, just a meat-suit puppet walking around on the bidding of a demon. Just something mindless that killed people, like a tool and not a person. Stiles stood in the foyer having a panic attack when a soft knock on the door actually startled him out of it.

“Stiles?” Malia asked from the other side of it. Stiles blinked back tears and reached out, locked the door very quietly. Then he turned and headed upstairs. For some reason on his way up he pulled out his phone. Still no texts. Stiles still felt like he needed help and he still didn’t know who to go to. So he scrubbed his arm across his watery eyes and went to his room instead.

 

***


	5. Chapter 5

It was a day or two before Stiles ventured far from his bedroom after that incident. He didn't trust himself to cross the street and know where he was. It turned his head kind of sideways and inside out to realize the only thing worse than being a puppet awake and aware and along for the ride was being the mindless puppet in the dark. The only thing in the world worse than knowing was actually not knowing anything at all. If he had made out with Malia - _Malia!_ \- and didn't remember then what else had he done? Where did he go? What else could he have done that he couldn't _remember_ in painful clarity?

It wasn't fair that he was too young to drink because that was the only way Stiles was willing to replicate the scenario to maybe find out. He was a happy drunk, and a cheap one, but he didn't do so happy on anything stronger than alcohol. Even wolfsbane was a great big _not gonna happen ever again_. So he just hid in his room and his dad answered the door, even telling Scott to go home once. And he slept a lot. He had sleeping pills for that. Those helped. And he woke up and was pretty sure he hadn't been used as a puppet while he slept.

He had dreams now and they sucked, but at least they were dreams. Actual dreams. Wherein he dreamed about dream stuff. Like a lady who wasn't his mom but still had the dark hair and brown eyes, who reminded him she was proud of him, that he wasn't to blame for the evil in others, to heal and to rest while he could. Or the dream where his mom showed up and told him he could protect himself from the evil in others, that he could take care of himself and his dad and everyone important to them. But neither one of them stuck around long enough to tell him _how_. His mom wanted to go get ice cream and root beer floats and Stiles wanted to move the sky to stay where she was so they walked to get root beer floats. And she always disappeared at the door. Always a dream.

And then there was god damned Derek who showed up and wanted to play basketball. He even asked Stiles if he knew how to fish because he knew a spot.

And he smiled a few times. It was surreal.

Stiles didn't quite trust it, so he stuck to his room and his den and his backyard. He answered texts but not phone calls unless it was his dad. He just wanted to hide and for once have it be okay if he did.

 

***

 

His Dad-the-Sheriff got tired of it after a few days and put an end to the vacation away from his vacation. 

"I get that you can't go to school. But you're not getting better sitting at home," he said. He used the awkward Dad-voice that neither one of them were really used to dealing with. Stiles had trained himself years ago to get away with murder when his dad used that voice, he knew how to manipulate every little nuance of the mental insecurities behind it. His dad was weak as his dad, stronger dealing with him as a sheriff, like he knew what he was doing as the guy behind the badge and wanted to run and hide when it wasn't there. But now the guy was the one trying to get Stiles away from an actual murder rap. Stiles wasn't sure for once how to weasel out of it.

"So you think I'll be better at the station?" He asked, openly annoyed. "You know, that place I blew up?"

"The station's been fixed up. And what's left, you can help with," said his dad.

"Yeah? And how'd Tank's funeral go over with everybody?” Stiles shot back. “The whole twenty-one gun thing? You've still got the black bands..."

"Shut up, Stiles," said his dad. No heat, just sad exhaustion. "Unless you've got something to tell me, that's not on you. And you can go see that for yourself."

So after that Stiles went to the station for his dad's shifts. Bleary-eyed and jumpy, he answered his dad's phone and sorted through the old files to see what was salvageable and what wasn't. He saw for himself that new walls were up, safety glass windows, stronger blinds. New file cabinets. Stronger and more durable. Actual cash had been spent on replacing and renovating. It was all covered by insurance and the city was happy to collect.

Faces were still missing from the shifts. But the ones who were there knew him, they knew about his mom, and they knew about the specialists and the hospitals. It was actually irritating to have what was left of the broken department treat _him_ like fragile glass. Stiles started kicking back against the kid-gloves. He didn't want treated like that. Especially not by the people who, culpable or not, he had caused to come to so much pain. So he upped his game. He slept at night instead of on the desk. He did the work and he did his homework and he talked to people like a normal human. He stopped hiding.

It took him a few days to realize that was why his dad had dragged his ass to the station to begin with. That messed with Stiles' head a little; maybe his dad really did know what he was doing at the whole parent thing.

 

***

 

It wasn't really surprising when Stiles got a text message from Scott on Malia's behalf. He had kept radio-silence as much as possible and used his dad making him work as an excuse. It worked for Scott, since he wasn't feeling social yet either. But Malia didn't _get it_. And Scott getting involved just made Stiles feel bad for ignoring both of them. He found Scott and Malia and Kira all three on his front porch when he and his dad got home that night. His dad gave them the yard.

"You alright, man?" Scott asked. He seemed worried. He _was_ worried, Stiles just had to get over the noise in his own head to remember that sometimes.

"Yeah, better anyway. Not awesome, realizing you can't control your own head and people get hurt," said Stiles. Scott nodded and winced, sympathetic.

"Tell me about it," he said.

For some reason the sincerity surprised him and Stiles had to stare at his friend for the longest time as he realized something pretty damn important. Stiles was caught up on missing time, on not knowing what he had done or hadn't done in the very recent past, not trusting himself and the worst amplified echo-chamber of guilt he had ever had in his trouble-making life, just to put it mildly. And he had finally realized he was overlooking something that had been right under his nose the whole time.

Scott had literally woken up to the crap Stiles felt now, day after day, for a year. He had probably told Stiles that a dozen times, but Stiles was always so focused on making it all better, making it all go back to normal. He used to be really worried about staying alive too in the bargain but now he was just kind of getting used to the idea of not going anywhere. It never really clicked for Stiles until then that Scott might know what it meant to be afraid of actually losing it, of actually killing his friends.

"For the record... I never actually figured you'd try to kill me," he said, half apology and half awkward realization. "Maybe I didn't listen all the time. But I always knew you weren't going to... Permanently damage me anyway."

Scott scrunched his nose up and held his breath, uncomfortable at the topic. "Maybe you did listen. You just didn't get what I was saying. If I can't control it... I don't know what'll happen. I don't know what I'll do. I don't even always remember what I did."

"Yeah but that time it wasn't you, man, it was-" Stiles stopped short when he realized that, in his haste to reassure Scott, he had done it all over again. He knew pretty well by now how mad he got at people telling him it wasn't his fault; that didn't change the fact that it happened on his watch. "I guess at least I can blame the stupid Nogitsune," he said then. "Mine's gone. All in my head now."

Scott nodded. He didn't have the option of getting the monster out of his head. He was stuck with it for life, this second half of him always there and waiting to take over in a fight-or-flight. Stiles suddenly felt better and worse at the same time. He had killed people, but it hadn't been his actions or his choice, and he had survived to walk away. Stiles got whammied and the first thing he did was kill people. He stabbed Scott with a god damned katana. Scott couldn't walk away from the blood instinct that had taken him over. And he hadn't killed anyone with his own two hands from it yet. He was still ahead of the game.

"Sorry I didn't get it before," he said. Scott offered up a shrug and a faint trace of his playful grin.

"Sorry I'm a shitty babysitter," he said. "I'm gonna be better."

"Nope. I don't need one, don't try it," Stiles replied.

"You need someone to watch your back," said Scott. "So get over it and enjoy your own personal stalker for awhile."

Stiles shrugged and nodded toward where Malia stood not far away. "Already got one."

"I am not a stalker," she said, defensive more than offended.

"She's worried about you too," said Kira. "She won't shut up about you, spent like eighty percent of the last couple days asking Scott to check on you..." At Scott's facepalm and Stiles' arched eyebrow, Kira realized her mistake. "Oh."

"That is, like, the _definition_ of stalker, dude," said Stiles. He shook his head as Malia started to look pouty. That was so the last thing he needed. He looked to Scott. "Lemme talk to her. I don't need a babysitter. I'm pretty sure."

Scott hesitated.

"And no werewolfy ears snooping," Stiles added. Scott grinned because he had very obviously been considering it. Stiles waved him off. "God, you're all creepy stalkers."

Scott winked at him and, apparently to prove Stiles' point, caught Kira by the hand and tugged her in to the Stilinski house like he owned the place. The door closed them out and Stiles and Malia stood on the lawn by the porch to stare at each other.

"Are you still mad at me?" she asked. He shook his head.

"I figured out I don't remember stuff that happened before," Stiles finally said. "That's... Not awesome. And I don't know what we did or why we did it. I mean, I thought until like, last week, that you hated me and Scott and you only hung around because he can help you figure this stuff out."

"I did hate you. Now I don't. You helped me, and I believe you. And you're warm and I'm cold and... You're important," said Malia. She crossed her arms and gave an awkward shrug, her expression confused. She did this cute angry-thing when she got confused, like it personally offended her. Stiles was taken aback by the honesty of it. He didn't know what it meant exactly but...

"I'm important?" he asked, surprised.

Malia nodded, looked a little offended by him that time. "Yes. To me."

Stiles stared at her, so confused. He was important to her, but she was a chore for him. His life sucked pretty hard just then and she was demanding help. She was hard to keep up with, hard to deal with. Stiles wasn't the most patient person. He could deal with her better than Scott could because Malia wasn't patient either, so Scott's rambling efforts to get her to do it right, starts and stops and start-overs always bugged her. She was a coyote-kid, she was sharp and picked up quickest without the kid gloves.

That was the difference, Scott treated everyone like he could hurt them or break them in two, and, even though now he knew why, Stiles... Didn't have that problem. He could run with wolves, argue with banshees, and talk to coyotes. That wasn't as awesome in practice as it sounded in theory.

And only an idiot tried to tell a coyote that something important to them wasn't actually _theirs_. A particular doll came to mind, with a trashed locker room and a terrified Kira not far behind. Malia was territorial and Stiles already knew that. But she was getting better. She was just so exhausting. And now she thought he was important. Which sounded a lot like Malia-talk for... Worth dating? Liking? More-than-friends? Kissing on the mouth at inappropriate times without asking first, definitely. 

There was nothing fair about Stiles' life. His life hated him.

"That's really... Sweet, Mal..." Stiles began. There was a noise from the front door that startled Stiles and made Malia snarl a little. Stiles saw his dad poke his head out.

"Dinner's on the way," he said. "Scott just put on a movie so I'm guessing you're going to have people over a while."

Stiles looked from his dad to Malia. She looked interested in the notion. Stiles scrubbed at his face. "Okay. We'll be in too."

But when his dad left, Malia seemed to have reached all her needed conclusions for herself and smiled at him for the unintentional invite. Stiles stifled a sigh and nodded. "Yeah, wanna do movie night with Scott and Kira?"

Malia rushed him with another massive hug. Seriously, why were shape-shifters so freakin' strong? Stiles hugged back and tried to keep her from wringing the breath out of him through his ribs.

 

***

 

It was late when the others left that night. Stiles had the jeep so he drove them all home. Malia was dropped off first, with Scott there to supervise the fact that she actually got out of the car. He seemed more comfortable with the idea that she wasn't out to rip Stiles to shreds but Stiles wasn't completely sold on it yet. He wanted a chaperone and Scott was the only one Malia would listen to. 

"She really likes you," Scott said, amused as Stiles climbed back into the jeep after another hug from Malia. Stiles rolled his eyes and resisted the urge to make the alpha walk home.

"Yeah, got the memo," he said instead.

When Stiles got back home, he found his dad still waiting up.

"So?" he asked. "Are you feeling any better?"

Stiles thought about lying. His dad leaned in the doorway to the kitchen, mug of coffee in his hand, looking relaxed and maybe a little hopeful. He wanted to lie. Just so it would be easier and he could just go sleep. But Stiles wanted someone to fix whatever was wrong with him, because something was wrong and he couldn't figure it out. That's what his dad was for anyway. Stiles reluctantly shook his head. His dad frowned and stood up.

"Is it a Scott thing?" he asked.

"No."

Stiles headed for the kitchen past his father and right for the coffee himself. His dad watched over him but didn't press. He waited for Stiles to get his coffee and sat down at the kitchen table in invitation. Stiles caught the hint. He dropped into a chair and immediately began studying his coffee mug. After a moment of silence his dad started fussing with a stack of papers on the desk and found something to read to give Stiles room to think. It was a little distracting which was actually helpful.

"I think I did something and I don't remember doing it. But now I'm kind of stuck with it," Stiles said. "I think. I don't know."

His dad stared, waiting for the joke to back the apparent punchline. Stiles mentally flailed a little. Why had he even said anything? What was he supposed to say? He was drowning and making it worse trying to say anything to his dad that made sense.

"Would a chessboard help?" his dad asked and Stiles dropped his head to his arms to pound against the table.

"Okay, not a chessboard thing," his dad said quickly. "No chess boards, no Scott."

Stiles nodded. The sheriff took a breath and looked relieved.

"So far, I gotta say, this sounds almost normal. For the first time in months," he said. He was his usual awkward but no less hopeful. Stiles scowled at the table.

"This is not normal."

"Then what is it, kid? You're talking in code here. And I've finally caught on that this isn't morse or binary or Cherokee or anything I've got some idea about. Help me out a little and we'll see what we can do about it?"

"I think Malia and the Nogitsune got it on when I was blacked out at Eichen House, or something," said Stiles. Sudden and abrupt and ripping off the bandaid all at once. It sounded really stupid once he had said it out loud. Something that had been bugging him for days now seemed laughable. It wasn't his problem if he wasn't involved, right? _Ha_. 

"I'm sorry, what?" At least his dad didn't laugh at him. Stiles could only shrug.

"I don't remember anything. But she does. She keeps... I dunno."

His dad shook his head. "Okay. For starters, I've seen the bills, son. You were on enough medication that weekend that you're probably still coming down from them. Alright? So if you did anything with her... That is a more likely reason than the nogi-thingy. With all the medicines from before all this started... Who knows what your tolerance is. So just... Let's not jump to the monsters first."

Stiles felt relieved for all of two seconds before his dad used the word monster in reference to anything familiar and personal and then he just felt gutted. Hollowed out and hung to dry and why did he bother fixing things that could never be fixed...

"That's not- come on, Stiles. I'm saying cut yourself a break!" His dad seemed to have caught on and he reached across to catch Stiles' attention with a hand to his wrist. "You're a kid, so maybe just this once, just maybe, you did something like, I dunno, a _kid_? Would that be the worst thing you've dealt with in the last six months? You've been saying for two weeks now, you just want normal so you can catch up. I'm saying maybe entertain the possibility that maybe you did."

Stiles didn't like that option any more than the other if he was honest. "But I don't remember-" 

His dad had calmed again and sighed. "Stiles. The demon who hijacked you killed people. For fun. Do you really think, if it had done as you say, the girl would still be alive?"

"Was that supposed to make me feel better? Because if it was, it missed-"

"Stiles, son. Stop trying to own what somebody else - someThing, not even someone - did. What happened - that happened to you. Just as much as it happened to everyone else, son. The difference is you're not dead," said his dad. "So can we just... Take that as some supernatural, cosmic, whatever you want to consider it... You aren't dead and you're not supposed to be so for godsakes stop trying to push yourself into the ground?"

Unable to look up at his dad suddenly, Stiles stared at his mug of coffee. That was probably a little too close to home and Stiles didn't want to talk about it. He just shrugged it off.

"So you... Here. Look at it like this. You had a one night stand alright? That's normal. You and this girl. It happens. Impaired judgement," his dad said, not giving up.

"But I don't remember."

"So? Who cares? The first time is terrible anyway. You could be better off than her, not remembering," his dad said. Stiles drudged up a glare. That was literally the last thing he ever wanted to hear from his father. The entire conversation was right up there on the list.

"Look... Do you like her?" His dad sounded like he could be persuaded to drop the subject but the question caught Stiles' attention and got stuck in his head.

"I don't know. I don't like me right now, so I don't know," he finally said. His dad frowned but nodded.

"So maybe give it a shot," his dad replied. "Maybe if you figure out if you like her you'll figure out the part about liking you. I'd rather you like you than anybody else on the planet. But maybe asking her on a date or something-"

"I don't wanna date anybody. I don't wanna go back to school for the same reason," said Stiles. His dad stared at him and sighed. He shook his head.

"Kiddo. You just sealed your own fate on that one," he said. He finished off his coffee and stood up. "You go back to school when Scott does. No more hiding. I can't tell you what to do about Malia Tate. But school? That one I can say something about."

"Yeah, you did, and I told you you're wrong," said Stiles, angry instead of miserable. It was actually an improvement. Progress. His dad clapped him on the shoulder.

"Baby steps, Stiles. You prove to me that you can't handle school again, we'll talk. But I'm not betting against you on this and just to prove it to you, you're staying where you are," his dad said.

Stiles scowled over at him as his dad left the room. That's what he got for asking for help. Screwed every time.

But then again, his dad had been right about working at the station.

 

***


	6. Chapter 6

Winter seemed to have forgotten what a seasonal change was all about and stayed dry. It warmed up again and felt almost like spring at Christmas. It was weird but it meant Stiles could get some fresh air when he slept, his window cracked open via an old CD case. He had done it hundreds of times and didn't think it was inviting trouble as long as it wasn't raining. He fell asleep completely unconcerned.

His dreams were a little concerning though. They were real again and had been a few times, off and on. Sometimes Stiles was at the school and sometimes he was at the preserve. He got lost in the preserve one time and decided he didn't mind it too bad; as dreams went it was boring and that was a good thing. He made a slingshot to entertain himself with and it felt like hours passed, like he was waiting, but nothing was there. Just too much fresh air.

Another time Derek was there. He knew the park like the back of his hand and they hiked to a high spot on the river. Also boring. But Derek had probably never talked so much in his life as he did just taking a walk in the woods. And Stiles listened because this Derek in his head wasn't a jerk. Just a guy who didn't always land on the right answers and it was so weird to hear him try to apologize for that without apologizing. He was sorting things out, out loud, and it was somehow reassuring to Stiles, unlocking the broken stuff in his own head. There was stuff he couldn't talk about with his shrink and stuff he couldn't talk about with his dad, but he could pick it apart in dreams using Derek as a sounding board.

"It isn't about getting angry," Derek told him. "It's about getting focused. I didn't get the difference before." They were on the way to the caves at the top of the park. Derek said he wanted to go swimming and Stiles didn't argue with dreams. It was a steep climb for a hike but Stiles kept up with the werewolf okay.

"I'm not angry," said Stiles, "I'm just..."

Derek looked back over his shoulder at him, the challenge on his face. Stiles scowled because he nailed it.

"The legacy of the Nogitsune especially is going to be anger. Chaos and pain? Results in anger," he said. "Up to you what you want to do, but I wouldn't suggest focusing on being angry. Especially not with yourself. Especially not for something someone else did."

"You can't drink poison and expect it to hurt somebody else," Stiles added, remembering the old wisdom that didn't really click until then. Derek nodded.

They hit the top of the hill then. And Stiles woke up without warning.

 

***

 

It stuck with him when he was awake and Stiles realized the only people he was hurting, the people he was making life chaos for, was his dad and Scott, and the others to a lesser extent. He was poisoning the waters and it wasn't hurting the Nogitsune. Just his family.

Baby step after baby step Stiles started pushing himself out of it just to stop that. He couldn't help them if he couldn't help himself, and that meant remembering his life didn't suck. The demon was gone. He was himself. Remembering who that was actually wasn't that hard. Letting go enough to allow himself to get back there was hard. It was a cycle and he was stuck on it and that was probably more the ADHD than the supernatural. But he was getting better at not snapping at his dad, not hiding from his friends, and back into his old grove.

He kept Scott around when Malia was around and that made things easier. Scott kept Malia on-task. They did the whole learning-thing as a group. Or a pack. Or whatever Scott considered it. He was an alpha, he needed a pack, but Stiles wasn't feeling the luck with Malia on board. She was a coyote, coyotes didn't do the pack thing. They had small families and moved a lot, covered territory. Stiles was pretty sure that was bad news for Scott's tenure as alpha, so he spent a lot of time trying to sell Malia on the idea of pack, and he wasn't going to give up.

For all Scott tried though, and Kira tried, and Stiles tried, they couldn't get through to Malia. She had control issues. She was like Stiles' worst ADHD days all rolled into one physical and emotionally-stunted person. Her attention jumped from shiny object to shiny object; fast movements were a really bad idea; she growled at things that didn't do what she wanted or expected... She was a very well-house trained puppy in some respects. But she was still trying to wrangle in her human side too. She could do okay when she tried.

The only one she had personal-boundary problems with was Stiles and he could live with that; he got in people's space without noticing all the time, too. He was pretty sure Malia noticed, but Stiles wasn't sure what to do with it yet. The last thing on his to-do list was figure out the female species, let alone the coyote kind. She was pretty, and she tried to be nice to him in her clueless way, but she was still a whole burlap bag full of pissed off cats and Stiles brought enough crazy to the table all on his own. He kept his hands to himself and Malia caught the hint.

Another week passed and Derek hadn't replied to any texts. Stiles was a little worried he had personally filled up the man's voicemail. It had gone from calls of "hey man, I need help if you've got a minute?" to "nevermind, I think I've got it handled," to "okay, nobody has seen you for weeks and the disappearing act is frankly a shitty thing to do..." And now it was an automated message saying the mailbox was disabled. Stiles mentioned it to Lydia, hinting without asking directly and she just pursed her lips and shook her head. Derek wasn't on her radar and Stiles took that to be a good thing.

Until Scott had them both meet him at the vet's because he had bad news that he wasn't sure what to do with. It wasn't every day that Scott asked for help so they showed up. Stiles wished he hadn't.

Stiles didn't expect Derek to reply to Scott's texts, he didn't usually. He called or he showed up for Scott. But it should have raised a bigger flag when his last words to Stiles were telling him to text or call and then Derek didn't acknowledge either. Derek was gone. How had he missed that?

He missed it because he was talking to the guy in his dreams almost every night so he didn't recognize what it meant when Derek didn't reply to his texts. Or what it meant when he filled up Derek's voicemail.

They spent an hour discussing options and researching places and names and hitting Lydia with random sounds to see what she could figure out from the good old World of the Weird. She didn't pick anything up that she would admit to but Lydia started looking at Stiles funny after that. She just shrugged and blew him off when he asked about it. He didn't once mention dreaming about Derek because whatever went on in his head wasn't important. Stiles went home to see what he could dig up on his dad's computer. Consensus was that they weren't giving up on Derek, pack or not.

And for some reason hunting for him seemed strangely normal. Stiles had the hang of the chase when it came to werewolves and hunters. Hours later, Stiles realized that the bad news was probably the best thing Scott had ever done for him in their lives. The puzzle was the push. It was like something finally clicked off in Stiles' head and he could think. He had focusing power and he didn't have the unwanted bad thoughts, shitty memories, and detrimental monologue invading his head. He could find Derek and they would get him home. It was just that simple.

 

***

 

Research projects had a tendency to get away from Stiles. Literally. He ended up passed out on his bed with his printer wirelessly spitting out papers and his laptop just barely managing not to end up on the floor. Stiles slept through the tense negotiation with gravity and didn't find out about it until he woke up. By then his printer had finished the map-project it had been ordered accidentally to print, recording forever that at some point Stiles' jaw and ear had managed to plot a course to Toronto. His fingers latched on to the slippery surface of the laptop and pulled it safely away from the edge. Then he blinked around at darkness when he knew he had left a light on. Stiles propped himself up on his elbows and tried to sort out what time it was by the fall of the moonlight through the window and _holy hell his window was fully open_...

Stiles sat up in a hurry, flailed a little and tossed himself off the side of the bed to find the light switch by the door.

"I swear to god, Derek, that better be your fault..." The announcement fell flat because with the lights on he could see that the culprit wasn't Derek. He had a mild heart attack and literally leaned on the wall for balance. "What the _hell_ , Malia!"

The coyote sat at the head of his bed, cross legged and watching him with her usual attentive stare. "What?"

"Wha- what are you doing in my- I was asleep!" Stiles was still working on breathing. Mastering the English language and How to Not Piss Off A Coyote were distant concerns to breathing. "I thought you were a goddamned demon!"

"Nope, you thought I was Derek, and that's weird, honestly," said Malia. "He's gone. Scott said-"

"I know what Scott said, thank you," said Stiles, snappish. "What I don't know is why you're in my room and on my bed when I was asleep and how did you get in without me hearing and-"

Malia wiggled socked toes as she unfolded her legs. "You left the window open. And I tiptoed."

Stiles sagged against the wall with a renewed understanding of the word _exhaustion_ and just nodded. It figured.

Malia watched him, a frown tugging. "I only came in because you smell... _Wrong_. Since the appointment with Scott, you came back and you're different. I was worried."

It surprised him and Stiles stared at her. "I'm not different. It's just bad news so I'm worried," he said. He reluctantly started to stand up. Malia wasn't catching the hint. Kid-gloves would be required to get his room back. Stiles was resigned to the kid gloves now that he knew Malia wouldn't fall for him hiding at Derek's for the night. No Derek, no wolf den, no problem for slightly-obsessed coyotes. Stiles didn't want to risk running in to Peter there anyway. He sat down on the edge of his bed and tucked his laptop safely under it on the floor.

"Okay, I'm thinking ground rules again..." he said. Malia rolled her eyes.

"I'm thinking I already know the ground rules. I'm supposed to knock before I come in the house," she said.

"Yes!" Stiles said quickly. He felt oddly proud as much as relieved. Malia pointed at the window.

" _That_ is not a door," she said. "It is a window. It was _open_. The ground rules don't count."

Stiles hung his head in his hands as he leaned over his knees. "They do, too."

Malia shook her head. "Not when you're acting weird and you smell funny."

"I'm not acting weird!" Stiles couldn't tell if he smelled funny. "I came home and started researching stuff for Derek and Scott. That is actually normal for me, really."

Malia frowned at him. "But it's not the same as you have been since last month..."

"I haven't been _me_ since last month," said Stiles. And he realized it was true when he said it, took a deep breath and let himself believe he was himself again. He tapped a hand to his chest. "This is me. It's different because it's me trying to get back to normal."

"So it's a good thing?" Malia asked. She looked like she was catching on so Stiles nodded.

"Yes. It's a very freakin' awesome thing," he said. "I like being me."

Stiles wasn't sure what he had expected but it wasn't a literal pounce-hug. He definitely hadn't expected the full kiss right on the lips and Stiles stared at her crosseyed for a moment.

"Malia..." His effort was still muffled by her face. "We talked about this too..."

Malia pulled back just enough to stare him in the eyes, tip of her nose hardly an inch from his.

" _You_ talked about it," she said. "I listened. And I think you're wrong."

"Gee, that's nice of you," began Stiles but Malia shushed him with a chiding growl.

"It's a good thing that you're _you_ , right?" she asked. He nodded, hesitant. "And the normal thing to do for good things is _more_ good things. Celebrate."

"Yes but there's a small detail you're overlooking here-"

"Not really," said Malia. "We did it before. Now you're you. You could remember."

Stiles shook his head quickly. "Malia, look, I don't- I'm not a casual sex kinda guy okay? Not my scene, if I get stuck with, like, kids or something I want-"

Malia laughed at him. Out loud. Totally not helping his game. Stiles narrowed his eyes at her and she smiled, smug.

"That's what you think that was?" she asked. "Come on, Stiles. Even I know that's not how you make puppies. What we did was just _fun_."

"No sex?" he asked, suspicious. She rolled her eyes at him.

"None."

He stared at her, surprised and relieved and he really did feel like kissing her then. That was the best thing he had heard all day. Literally. Her self-satisfied grin brightened into a smile and she kissed him again. That time he let her, and he returned it. Good, clean, wholesome fun between friends, _that_ he figured he could do.

And it was. Stiles actually let himself have fun. Until he apparently did something a little too well - at least he hoped like hell that's what it meant - and Malia let out a squeak at the same time as claws stabbed right into the small of Stiles' back and his hip where her hands had been teasing a heartbeat before. That kind of definitely more than a little bit killed the _fun_.

"Ow. Ow. Ow. Unclaw. Now..." It was really hard to keep his voice from shaking or otherwise potentially provoke the coyote that literally had her claws in him. She looked up at him in a panic.

"I'm trying!" She seemed to mean it. Stiles worried more about not passing out because _oww_... Ten little X-acto knives dug in right at the nerves along his back and hip. He was going to just die from pain or bleed to death, he wasn't sure which would happen first. But it was definitely all in the realm of possibility.

Then she figured out how to control her claws and Stiles curled off against the wall the second he could move. It wouldn't actually do anything to fix the problem but at least he wasn't moving and making it worse.

"I'm sorry I'm sorry!" Her hands fluttered at him, nervous and flighty and in his face just to make everything worse. He waved her off rather than deal with it. He needed to go take care of the scratches - _impaled_ , the word was _impaled_ \- before he turned into a werewolf or coyote or something. Malia followed after him, still worrying at her lip, still anxious. She really hadn't meant it. And now he knew better.

"Don't worry about it," he said finally. Then he realized he couldn't exactly fix it himself and let her in the bathroom with him. "Just help fix it."

"I can fix it," she said, nodding. "I can fix it."

The best they had was hydrogen peroxide since Stiles wasn't brave enough to apply bleach or burn the marks with fire, and Malia figured out how to clean up his back with Stiles watching her in the mirror. She didn't stab him again. He didn't heal up instantly and she was kind of fascinated by that, which didn't help Stiles' faith in his safety around his friends. But she got him bandaged up and they moved the party back to his room before his dad saw the bloody mess that had been made of his shirt. Another one bit the dust.

"Okay, well, it was fun for awhile anyway," said Stiles. Malia looked hopeful. He squinted at her, motioned to his hip. "But I think I've had more than enough fun for awhile. Okay? There's only so much blood in my body that I can afford to lose."

She wanted to stay and watch over him some more but Stiles wanted her out. His house, his rules, so she left. Stiles collapsed on his bed after closing the window this time. And locking it too, just in case it helped.

 

***

 

There was a light on in Stiles' room when he woke up. The one he used for reading by. Again he felt disoriented because he had turned the lights off when he went back to sleep. Now the lights were on.

"Damnit, Malia..." he muttered, barely squinting his eyes open as he propped himself up off his pillow. He shouldered into something - _someone_ \- and Stiles opened his eyes fast. He calmed down again when he saw Derek sitting up against the wall, a book in his lap under the spill of light. Stiles blinked at him.

"What the hell are _you_ doing here?" he blurted.

Derek arched an eyebrow at him, then looked around. "I dunno. This one's on you."

Stiles blinked at that and then looked around. There was a slight haze to the air that he had come to assume meant one of his Real-Dreams. Well, great. He was so worn out lately he was dreaming about sleep. Stiles punched his pillow and curled back over it. "It's like grand central station or something. Everyone comes and goes..."

"You were expecting someone else," said Derek. "So yeah, I gathered that."

"She won't leave me alone," said Stiles. The pout was reconsidered and he sighed. "That's not fair, I guess. We started it. We owe her. And it's not her fault."

"That doesn't make her your fault either," said Derek. "Scott's not your fault. I'm not."

"Apparently I disagree or you wouldn't be in my head," said Stiles. He looked up at Derek, confused for a moment. "Where are you anyway?"

He knew it couldn't be that easy, just ask his subconscious for the secrets of the universe and get an actually useful answer. He stared at Derek anyway, waiting. The man frowned at his book - some heavy thing on the Aztecs, where the hell did Stiles' brain dig up this stuff? - and then closed it.

"I don't know," he said finally. "I guess I'm here."

"You're in my head?" asked Stiles. Derek nodded. He rolled his eyes.

"Trust me, not my first choice of accommodations either," he said, his usual self after all. He looked from Stiles to the rest of the room again. "But it must be better than wherever I should be."

"You're not in my head, Derek," said Stiles, sobered instantly. "Trust me. _That_ feels a lot different."

Derek looked him in the eye again and shrugged. "Then we're somewhere in between. What I do know is if I had answers I wouldn't be _there_."

"Can I help?" asked Stiles. "I mean, how? Where do I look? What does _in between_ even mean?"

Derek rolled his eyes. "What did I just say, Stiles?"

Stiles stalled out. Then he caught on. "Right. You don't know either."

Derek nodded and his attention dropped back to his book. On a whim - _it was his head, he didn't have to explain himself_ \- Stiles caught Derek by the wrist, just to see if he still felt real. It was a dream but it wasn't. Derek was real. But he wasn't.

"Just stay here then," Stiles said. Derek stared at where he had caught his arm. Then he turned his arm just enough to catch Stiles' wrist in return. He flipped his book back open one-handed and went quietly back to reading without letting go. Stiles shoved his shoulder against Derek's leg and curled back up over his pillow to settle in again without loosening his hold on Derek. That was something real and he would hang on to what he could until they got Derek back.

 

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tah dah! 
> 
> That's it, that's the "smoosh between 3b and 4!" as Jo called it. not 50k, 'cause we've got s4. ;)


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